Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 62-184856 (Japanese Patent No. 2594912) describes an ink cartridge and a recording apparatus in which the ink cartridge has a non-volatile memory in which data corresponding to the amount of remaining ink stored in order to manage the amount of remaining ink for each cartridge.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 8-197748 describes an ink jet printer including an ink cartridge having a non-volatile memory in which ID information is stored and a printer main body correlating the ID information for the ink cartridge read out from the non-volatile memory with the amount of remaining ink so as to eliminate the need to redetect the amount of remaining ink when an ink cartridge with the same ID information is reinstalled.
The conventional recording apparatus and the like use what is called a bit-sequential-access type non-volatile memory that allows data to be written thereto and read out therefrom in a bit serial manner, in order to reduce the number of signal lines between the control section of the printer main body and the non-volatile memory. Since, however, the non-volatile memory is accessed in a bit serial manner, a large amount of time is required for writes and readouts. Thus, if the control section (a CPU or the like) of the printer main body directly controls access to the non-volatile memory, while the non-volatile memory is being accessed, the control section (the CPU or the like) cannot execute other processes. This may causes a delay in a printing process or a response to an operational input from an operation section.
The present invention is provided to solve these problems, and it is an object thereof to provide a recording apparatus having a memory access controlling section between a control section of a recording apparatus main body and a non-volatile memory to reduce the amount of processing executed by the control section to access the non-volatile memory, as well as a semiconductor device and a recording head apparatus which are used for this purpose.